


bloodbuzz (or, four funerals and a wedding)

by somethingdifferent



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: 69 (Sex Position), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Come Marking, Dom/sub Undertones, F/M, Face-Sitting, Light breathplay, Mentions of Workplace Sexual Harrassment, Mildly Dubious Consent, Minor Character Deaths, No Pregnancy, Overstimulation, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, Semi-Public Sex, Some Femdom, Under-negotiated Kink, Unsafe Sex, Use of Emergency Contraceptives, Wakes & Funerals, a brief moment of what might be considered somnophilia LITE LITE, angsty sex, best of both worlds, but he doesn't do anything so you know it's not a huge thing, fucking in a church basement as you do, inappropriate behavior at said wakes and funerals, like HEAPS of unsafe sex, sex as a coping mechanism, she falls asleep while he's still inside her, some dom ben
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:13:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26980447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somethingdifferent/pseuds/somethingdifferent
Summary: Ben looks, filling his eyes with the sight of her. Thinking of the last time he saw that pretty face: how those eyes flashed, how she jabbed her finger into his chest after she closed the bathroom door behind her, voice a shrill whisper of accusation,where were you you know he was deteriorating why didn’t you come home when your mother called don’t you know how he begged to see you.The feeling of her wrist when he grabbed her hand, the bone jutting into his palm. His forearm on the door, trapping her against his body. Teeth knocking, biting her plump lip, not even enough to be called a kiss. His body driving into hers like a car crash.Wherein Ben and Rey hook up at a funeral. And then another. And another. And another.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 50
Kudos: 479





	bloodbuzz (or, four funerals and a wedding)

**Author's Note:**

> my goal for this fic was to do a pwp that was less than 5k words and clearly i failed
> 
> there's a lot going on with this fic, so i tried to overtag rather than undertag, but if i missed anything please let me know!!!
> 
> thank you to [FRAK](https://twitter.com/AllFrak) who fixed this up and listened to all of my complaining and was just generally the best person ever!!! she made this fic a whole heck of a lot better
> 
> the title was ripped straight from two sources: bloodbuzz ohio by the national and four weddings and a funeral, a romcom i never much cared for

** SOLO **

He's still a little bit jet-lagged. Out of it. Ben flew in that morning wearing his suit for the service already on his back; his carry-on is safely tucked away in the trunk of the rental car that’s parked out in the cathedral lot. He came straight from the airport, smelling like stale air and sleet, black tie crumpled and eyes dark and tired. His mother told him to fix himself up before the drive to the cemetery. He went to the rarely used bathroom in the basement of the church after Mass, ostensibly to do that.

Now, he’s in there with Han’s ( _former_ now, he supposes) caretaker.

Because Ben is fucking her.

Rey—that’s her name, she told him an hour ago when they met, in a voice all ice and callous indifference, _Rey Johnson_ —is bent over in front of him, hands pressed flat to the door. It rattles on its hinges with every thrust, loud and obvious. Anyone walking by would know exactly what’s happening on the other side. Ben can’t even muster up the shame for his lack of shame over that. Shame fell out the fucking window the second he decided to have sex at his own father’s funeral. With the fucking _help_ , no less. What an insufferable, waste of a person he’s become. Early mid-life crisis shit, a man suddenly made aware of his own mortality on the heels of so-called personal tragedy. Total cliche.

Black tights trap Rey’s thighs together for him, tugged down just enough to expose her pussy in his haste to get her undressed, her black dress flipped up over her ass. She’s tight, wet, warm and leaking all over his cock. A nice hole made for him to fuck raw, his body punching little whines out of her throat, her stockinged legs quivering, a pretty mess. She’s in modest heels—modest everything, really, with her high neckline, hem cut just above the knee and all; in other circumstances he knows exactly what he’d think of a girl like that, prudish and prissy and prim, _not too good for any of that now though is she_ —and she’s stretched up on her tiptoes, trying to level out their height difference. She’s got no leverage like this, he knows; she can only ride it out, take whatever he gives her.

And she is. _Taking_ it. Sweet and soft limbs he can move how he wants, a pliable body desperate for a cock to push its way inside. And of course he’ll oblige. Whimpers eke out of her throat like puffs of cigarette smoke, little pants of air escaping her every so often, _ah ah ah_ s he’s trying to commit to memory. 

Ben mouths the back of her neck, fingers digging into her hips, too tight, too deep, bone pressing into warm flesh.

He’s going to bruise her.

He can’t bring himself to loosen his grip.

He feels her fingers brush against his cock, skimming against where they’re joined together. Her breath hitches as she touches herself, and he can’t see her face but he can imagine it well enough, that slackening of the jaw, eyes rolling up. He’s glad she’s getting something out of this, even if it’s only her own doing, regrets a little that he’s not being a better lover. But it doesn’t matter. It’s only the one time.

His own hand pushes up her torso, clumsily groping her breasts through the thin fabric of her dress. He snarls, an animal, and goes for her throat, fingers digging into the fabric at her neckline, muscles tensed so he can tear—

“Don’t,” she gasps, the first word she’s spoken since he turned her body around and fell to his knees behind her, tongue in her pussy, trying to get her wet enough to take his cock. He freezes mid-thrust, eyes wide. Not even breathing. Afraid it’s already over. 

Rey pauses, gulps in air. Adjusts her position in front of him, shifting her weight from one foot to another. His hard-on twitches inside her, a dull throb of almost-pain.

She whispers, the sound of it the gentle scratch of a record player, “Don’t rip my dress.”

His breath leaves him in a rush, emptying out his chest. Ben nods, forehead knocking against the uppermost bumps of her spine, where her hair is still tied up in a simple French twist. 

Slowly, he stuffs his cock back into her waiting, soaking cunt, listening for every hitch of her breath, every single burst of a whine. He palms her tits, raises his hand to her neck and wraps his fingers around her throat, huffing as he fixes his grasp on her hip with his other hand. Her toes lift almost entirely out of her shoes, fingers scrabbling for purchase that won’t be found on the smooth wooden door.

He notches even deeper inside at the change in angle; Ben muffles his groan into her hair. Rey lets out a noise that’s almost a sob, caught in her chest, lips pressed tight together. Her hand returns between her legs, rhythm erratic as she rubs quick, merciless circles around her clitoris, and her whole body is trembling now, every little bit of her shivering into pieces.

His hips jack into hers, harsh and deliberate, once, twice, and all at once, he feels her cunt pulse like a heartbeat, fluttering around him. Her head falls forward, thumping against the door, and she cries out, this time not bothering to cover up the sound. When she finally works through it, going limp against him, Ben pulls out, jerking his cock inside the tight circle of his fingers, using her wetness to ease the unbearable slide, pushing her dress higher and higher up her back, revealing more and more skin, uncharted territory, until finally he comes, splattering milky-white semen over the gentle, pale curve of her spine. It slides down, obscene, pooling in the dimples above her ass.

Ben’s lungs strain, heaving in air, distantly fascinated at how her body quivers under his touch. Rey gulps for oxygen like a fish out of water, elbows bending as she begins to straighten her body, shoulders quaking. He gently eases her back down before she can move away, one hand on her clothed shoulder blade, and Rey—lets him. Lets him hold her in place a moment longer, like she’s a bowl of fruit he might like to paint. His other hand drifts further down, reaching to rub his come deeper into those dimples, pulling his fingers across the landscape of her back.

He makes a line connecting the two soft little indents, like a private joke he has only with himself.

How funny, after all—that he hadn’t even noticed them before.

  
** ACKBAR **

It’s only another few months before he sees her again. At a wake, this time, for one of his mother’s old colleagues. The man’s passing was more expected than Han’s— _how quickly he declined,_ people commented in hushed voices after his father’s burial, teeth stained dark with his mother’s best wine—and when Ben offers quiet, blank-faced condolences to Ackbar’s son the younger man only shrugs and cracks a half-grin as he thanks Ben for his attendance. As if to say, _at least his suffering is over_.

Ben tries to grin in return. Finds that he can’t.

His own father’s death was sudden enough that Ben didn’t even make it in time to say goodbye. Instead, he spent the week getting Han’s house in order—divvying up his possessions between what to sell and what to keep, using what little money he made to settle some of his father’s debts. The rest Ben paid off himself, without telling his mother. A pilgrimage of grief without any grieving actually done.

He sees her first. In Ackbar’s house, standing with the widow of the deceased. If he’s thought of her in the months since the last funeral—and he has, he’s not afraid to admit that, of course he has—the memory can’t compare to the real thing. Doesn’t even come close.

It isn’t fair, that she’s so much _more_. 

Then, before Ben can prepare himself for it, Rey glances in his direction. He watches, quiet, as her chin tips up, inhaling sharp between parted lips, visible to him even from across the room. She notices him noticing her, almost-green eyes widening in shock.

Ben looks, filling his eyes with the sight of her. Thinking of the last time he saw that pretty face: how those eyes flashed, how she jabbed her finger into his chest after she closed the bathroom door behind her, voice a shrill whisper of accusation, _where were you you know he was deteriorating why didn’t you come home when your mother called don’t you know how he begged to see you_. The feeling of her wrist when he grabbed her hand, the bone jutting into his palm. His forearm on the door, trapping her against his body. Teeth knocking, biting her plump lip, not even enough to be called a kiss. His body driving into hers like a car crash. 

He looks, and Rey looks back.

He doesn’t cross the room.

She does.

“It’s good to see you, Mr. Solo,” she says, using a name she’s never called him. Not that she called him anything really. There wasn’t time for that. Her voice is lower than he remembered, serious and professional. Maybe that shouldn’t surprise him so much; they are acquaintances of only an hour, after all, and he spent most of that time wringing helpless little noises out of her. He wonders if she was Ackbar’s nurse, too, but he won’t ask. It doesn’t matter.

She doesn’t, either. Matter.

Her face is gentle, eyes sympathetic. Ben’s jaw tightens, a muscle ticking under his left eye. 

She asks, “How have you been doing?”

Ben nods, avoiding her gaze, focusing instead on the whiskey left in his glass. How it catches the light. “Fine,” he says. “Fine.”

They’re silent for a moment, the murmuring of the other guests filling in the space between them. “Are you in town for long?”

He shakes his head. No.

Rey shifts on her feet, and he wonders if she’s remembering it, too. His tongue on her cunt, come on her back.

“How did you know the Admiral?”

“Can we not do this?” he bites out, and she reels back, face falling.

After a moment, she recovers, enough to snap, deadly quiet, “ _Fine_.” Her back straightens, shoulders squaring under a thin, lopsided shawl. Probably a gift from one of her clients, the dead-men-walking or their sad, shriveled widows. How depressing. “You know, it doesn’t cost you anything to be a little fucking polite—”

 _Why didn’t you come? I was all alone with him, and he was_ dying _, and all he wanted was you, to_ see _you, and you don’t know what so many people would give to have that chance so why didn’t you—_

“It’s Ben,” he says.

A delicate wrinkle appears in the middle of her brow. “Pardon?”

He clears his throat and looks up quickly. She stares back at him, startling, freckled and young as a fawn in the woods. Shimmering and new. “You can call me Ben,” he tells her.

They’re in his car this time. Another rental, a Honda Civic with tinted windows, parked in the alley behind the church dumpsters. The passenger seat reclines all the way, and Rey is digging her nails into his chest while she rides him.

He has two fingers shoved in her mouth, his other hand roaming over her wide hips, the curve of her ass, the flat plane of her stomach, soft little tits, bare this time, her dress pulled down to the waist so he can see stiff pink nipples. Overwhelmed with the possibilities of what he can touch. She holds his arm in place as she sucks his index and middle finger into her wet, open mouth, cheeks hollowed out. 

“You like that, honey?” Ben hears his own voice talking like he’s across the room from himself, faraway and uncontrolled. Rey nods, frantic, the muscles in her legs trembling as she lifts herself up, down, over and over. Ben looks down between them, blood roaring in his ears when he sees the sheen of slick wetness painting the insides of her thighs, glistening in the hair at the base of his shaft. “Fuck yourself on my cock for me.” His teeth bare as he drags his hand out of her mouth, trailing her spit along the column of her throat. “Tell me how much you like it.”

“I like it,” she gasps, “I like it, Ben.”

“Say you want it.”

She nods again, the hair she has tied up in a neat bun beginning to fall out of its style, curly wisps around her temples. “I want it. I want it, want your cock, want you—”

Ben sits up suddenly, clapping his palm over her mouth, muffling the rest of her sentence into his skin. “You wanted this,” he says, taking over the rhythm from her, stroking punishingly deep. He buries himself inside her until he can feel her whole body quaking around him, tensing up like a rubber band ready to snap. Rey squeezes her eyes shut, a tear sliding down her cheek as she keens into his hand. “That’s right,” he coos. “This wet little pussy wanted a big hard cock inside it. Open those legs up for me, honey. Wider.”

He slips in further as her thighs spread, and Rey cries out, the sound muffled. “ _There_ you go,” he says, his voice dipping low, scraping like gravel. His thumb smooths under her eye, catching the track of salt water as it falls across her face.

He says, “Much better,” and feels her come around him for the second time, her body bucking against his. 

Ben slides out and skewers her again as she comes back down, measured and deliberate, catching her weight as her arms slump up against his chest. “There you go,” he murmurs again, this time into her cheek as she sighs, her head nestling into his shoulder.

His hips twist, grinding deep, touching a spot that makes her moan so loud the bottom of his stomach drops out. He eases her back and forth along his cock, arms wrapping around her like some indecent parody of an embrace, rubbing over her back soothingly.

“Just one more,” he mumbles, almost to himself. Making up for the last time, when she’d had to take her pleasure by herself. Or maybe he just wants to keep her as long as he can before he has to open the door and give her back. Ben doesn’t want to think about that.

“Give me another,” he promises, lips brushing her temple, almost a kiss, “and then we can go.”

He makes her come three more times—fucking her until she’s crying in earnest, going completely limp after the fourth orgasm. Rey shivers against him like a body left in the cold outside, hiccuping wet and soft into his collarbone, making his nicest suit damp with tears. Ben languidly pumps her full, her cunt drenched and parting around him like water. When he finally finishes, to the sound of her sighing _Ben, Ben, Ben,_ his cock spurting thick ropes of come inside her hot, wet heat, he doesn’t even bother to pull out.

** SNOKE **

She’s on the clock, technically speaking. Rey gets paid by the hour, she told him, and she only attended the service and luncheon after to assist her newest client with taking his medication and generally getting around.

“You have,” she tells him, efficiently unbuttoning her blouse as they stumble through the door of the guest bedroom, “ten minutes to get me off before anyone notices I’m gone.”

He doesn’t know why he expected it, that he would see her again, at another funeral, this one only two months after the last. He doesn’t know how he knew the moment they locked eyes that they’d end up like this, arms wrapped around each other and legs uncoordinated, carrying them to bed. 

Ben has been in this house before. The first time was six years ago, just after he started working for First Order. Snoke invited him to dinner with some of the upper level executives, all of them old, grinning men with skull-shaped heads and red faces, smoking Cuban cigars. Ben drank until he didn’t mind any of what they said, until he found it funny enough to laugh, to say all the right things.

Now, Snoke is dead, never to be seen again, his ashes packed in an urn in a row of others just like it, in the graveyard they just came from. Forgotten. Gone. Forever.

And Ben is going to make this heart-stoppingly beautiful girl _come_ in this horrible, cold place. He’s going to make it fucking _his_.

He feels almost giddy as she toes off her sensible black heels, peeling away her stockings until they’re bunched up around her ankles. She pulls them off completely after another moment, hopping on one foot to do so, simple cotton panties catching on her foot before she tosses them aside. Ben stands by the door, staring at Rey as she half-undresses by the crisp, unused bed, his eyes blinded by the mid-afternoon sun. How it catches in the strands out her hair, turning her silhouette gold.

“Get on the bed,” she says. Her eyes are dark, a little feral, fingers twitching at her sides. “On your back.”

He does. Relishes the way he plants his still-dirtied shoes on the linen. 

Rey climbs up after him, crawling over his body. Her blouse gapes open, still tucked into her pencil skirt, and he reaches for her, tugs her up close so he can lay his lips on her, tongue laving over the curve of her breast. He pinches her nipples through her thin, plain bra, the barest hint of a smile flashing over his face before he can think any better of it when she moans, the sound of it muffled by her own wrist.

Then—

Rey is above him, hands threaded through his hair, pulling and twisting as she lowers her cunt above his open mouth. Ben is achingly hard, cock straining against his belt, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except for this: Rey sighing with relief as she sinks down, her thighs bracketing his ears like parentheses as she begins to rock over his face, grinding her pussy down onto him. 

He starts with broad, flat strokes, sucking her folds into his mouth, catching every drop of her essence with his tongue. Arm braced across her lower abdomen, holding her in place. Kissing the insides of her thighs, tracing a constellation of freckles buried under her wiry thatch of hair. Making her messier, wetter, until he can feel her dripping down onto his chin. When his nose brushes her clit, her whole body _jolts_ , like she jammed a fork in an electrical socket.

His tongue swirls her sweet little hole, dragging back up her seam until he can suck her clit into his mouth and—

“Yes,” she hisses, dragging the ‘s’ out between clenched teeth, “ _yes_.”

She’s panting now, her hands leaving his hair to grope her tits, carelessly dragging the cups of her bra down to roll her nipples between her fingers. Her hips make little circles, seemingly unconscious, counteracting his rhythm as he flicks his tongue over that bud of nerves, both of them chasing her release. 

When he reaches one hand down to palm his hard-on through his slacks, she grabs his wrist, dragging it back to her waist, encouraging him to dig his fingers in. “Two fingers,” she says, _orders_. “Inside. Curl them forward and—”

He’s obeying before she can finish the thought, her voice hitching into a squeak as he fucks her onto his hand, the muscles in her legs quivering around his head. 

She comes with six minutes to spare.

A gush of slick wetness slides down his fingers like honey, a little noise escaping her that sounds like he knocked the wind out of her. Her hips roll against his face, nose to chin; she lets out a breathless, helpless whine that makes him close his eyes, savoring it like fine wine. 

He works her through her orgasm, licking soft, slow kisses against her pussy as she whimpers softly, a sound like crying.

The ache in his cock is nearly unbearable by the time she climbs off of him, slinking down his body, setting herself between his legs at the foot of the bed.

Rey eyes him, something between appreciation and apprehension in her eyes. Ben can’t quite tell.

His hands jerk at his sides, itching to move. 

“You can touch it now,” she says, casual, and the moment the words leave her lips he fumbles with his belt and zipper, groaning with relief when he pulls out his cock.

He starts up a quick, desperate pace, hips bucking as he fucks his own fist. He should be ashamed of himself, debased as he is in front of this person who is little more than a stranger. But he isn’t.

He likes the way she looks at him as he gets himself off: like he’s a loose thread she can’t wait to see unravel for her.

She squirms on the bed, still just looking, as he licks the palm of his hand and returns it to his erection, grunting at the slide.

That’s all she does—looks—until it isn’t anymore.

He feels her move before he sees it, the too-firm mattress shifting under him. His eyes open, a moan strangling in his throat as he watches her leaning close, mouth open and lips wet with saliva, tongue flat and wide. The head of his cock bumps against her chin, her lipstick beginning to smear red across smooth skin, filthy and perfect. 

Ben almost loses it just at the visual; he has to bite back a shout at the sight of her mouth widening eagerly for his dick. 

“So good, Ben,” she murmurs, _moans_ , and she reaches, cups his balls in her palm, “such a good boy, you can come for me now—”

It’s all he needs.

Ben comes with a barely stifled groan, cock throbbing almost painfully. He watches, with a delicious shiver of satisfaction, as she catches every drop of semen inside her pretty little mouth, as she presses her lips together so she can swallow it greedily down.

“Fuck,” he mumbles, faint, almost light-headed. Already trying to commit everything to memory. His thumb rubs over the hinge of her jaw as he heaves in shaking lungfuls of air, slipping to her lips so he can wipe away the wet smear of lipstick.

Before he can blink, she turns her head, catching the digit between her teeth. Tongue swirling around his knuckle before she lets it fall from her mouth, resting against her bottom lip.

“Ben,” she whispers. Her lips purse, almost kissing his skin.

Something shifts on a dime.

Ben pulls his hand away, sitting up on the bed. Rey moves back, her eyebrows knitting together. 

He laughs, the sound bubbling out before he can even think to stop it. Rey suddenly jerks away, out of his reach, her spine straightening instantly.

Her eyes shutter, then quiet.

“What the fuck is wrong with you,” she says, voice flat at the end like it isn’t a question.

And what is he supposed to say to that?

He manages, after a long moment, still struggling to catch his breath, “We’re in his fucking house.”

The divot between her brow etches deeper. “Whose house?”

“Snoke.” Her expression remains stubbornly unaffected, and it takes Ben a long moment to realize it’s because she has no idea whose funeral she just attended. He explains, his mouth turning down slightly, “My old boss. The one who—he wouldn’t let me go.”

Her expression darkens. Her voice is clipped. “What?”

“Home. When Han was—” he flinches, eyes lowering so he can buckle his belt, “when he was dying, I couldn’t go home because—”

“What?” she repeats, confusion and something that could be disappointment warring in the single word.

“A business trip.” A sharp bark of laughter spills out of him. He shakes his head, fiddling with his neatly fastened cuffs. “I had—it was a business trip.”

There is a long pause, during which Ben can only hear his own breath, the quiet hush of the ceiling fan spinning overhead.

When he glances back up, he is confronted with the sight of Rey sitting stock-still, her eyes cold as the moment she first laid them on him.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Her voice is dull, blunt as a heavy instrument. Ben turns his body. Puts his shoes back on the ground, which, he thinks, might be churning underneath him like a ship at sea. “Is that why we just had sex?” Her pitch rises with every word, “So you could stick it to your dead boss?”

Ben speaks before he can tell himself not to. “That wasn’t sex.”

Her hazel eyes flash dangerously, lips pressing together in a thin, mean line. “What do you want to call it?”

“Oral.”

It’s quick, the way her whole body changes at that. Every single part of her snapping into action, as if she were suddenly waking from a long rest.

She stands, gathering her discarded clothes from the ground, trying to do up her blouse at the same time, failing at both tasks simultaneously.

Ben flinches, pinching the bridge of his nose, voice tight as he says, “Rey, I didn’t mean it like—” his hand drags down his face, rubbing across his mouth, where the taste of her still lingers, “that was a mistake—”

Rey brings herself to her full height, smoothing shaking hands over the back of her skirt. She missed a button on her blouse, and the shirt parts awkwardly, showing too many inches of tan skin, the elastic edge of her bra. “Fuck this,” she says to the floor, half bending over again to tug her tights back on, “I don’t know why I ever thought—”

She cuts off the rest of her own sentence, turning away from him to take a step toward the door, and all at once the last few minutes catch up to Ben.

He gets to his feet, trailing after her like a comma. 

“Hey,” he says, perhaps a little louder than he intended. She doesn’t respond. Doesn’t so much as glance in his direction. “Wait, Rey, where are you going?”

She whirls around, her features twisted up in anger, utterly livid. “You’re a real piece of shit, Ben.” She’s seething, terrible and incandescent with fury. “Getting meaningless revenge against a man who’s already in the ground? Is that your idea of satisfaction?”

He takes a step forward, another, a strange, foolish panic burbling up his gullet like vomit. “No—”

“Did it even matter to you that I was here?” she hurls out. “Or was it just good fucking luck? Because I think it would have been enough for you to piss in his sink.”

He stares at her, feeling dazed, like she just sucker punched him. “Of course, it mattered.” Ben pauses, swallowing down the bile he can taste in the back of his throat. “I just wanted—” he blinks, looking around the room like something in it might be able to save him, “I just wanted—”

“You wanted what?”

“Nothing,” he bites out, teeth bared when he moves closer, cutting the distance between them in half. Glaring down at her, at her awful beautiful face and her awful trembling mouth. The one he’s never touched with any hint of tenderness. “Nothing at all.”

Rey stares at him, something shining wet in the corners of her eyes. “ _Nothing_.” She repeats the word like he spelled it with four letters, and Ben—

Ben stands there and watches as she nods. He can feel it—the way she’s hardened herself against him. The way she’s already gone. He can tell; he knows what it looks like.

And what would that matter to him anyway.

Her jaw twitches, a muscle tensing. Hands curling into fists.

It takes her a moment before she speaks again, her voice now even and deadly calm, toneless and frigid.

“Before we never see each other again,” she hisses, every syllable cut like scissors from between her teeth, “let’s make one thing perfectly clear—Snoke, that dead man you’re letting run your life, still? He didn’t make you miss saying goodbye to your father. You _chose_ to do it.” She’s closer to him now than before, and somehow he didn’t notice it. How near she is. He can see every single freckle on her cheeks as clear as the daylight dappling from between the curtains, falling across her hair like a veil. “Every single thing that’s led you to this moment, right now? All of it was you. And that’s your problem, right there. You can’t take any responsibility for anything.”

His feet carry him closer. His eyes trace over her body, across the fine features of her face. Her knees, the ones she held beside his head as she took her pleasure from him. As he gave it to her, mouth open and tongue wanting. “You don’t fucking know me,” he says, and it isn’t nearly as cutting as he’d like it to be.

More like a wail of despair, a rending of his garments and gnashing of his teeth. 

“Don’t I?” she says, the sound of it a whisper of skin on skin. 

Ben’s mouth is a desert, incapable of shaping a single syllable of reply. 

“You know what,” she says, barely louder than a sigh, “you’re right. I don’t know you, and you don’t know me.” Her smile, when she forces one on her face, is horribly blank. “We’re just a couple of regulars on the funeral circuit.”

He tries her name out, the noise flimsy and useless in his mouth. “Rey.”

She turns away from him, and he knows it then. An end to something that never really began. “I’m just glad I took that Plan B after the last time you made a mistake,” she adds, casually cruel, cruelly casual. Both and neither at once. Her voice cracks, eyes shining wet like far-off diamonds, bright in the sun. “At least that’s one more thing you won’t have to live with anymore.”

Rey holds his gaze, until suddenly, without warning, she doesn’t anymore.

And then Ben is in a room in a house that isn’t his, with a victory as hollow as an empty stomach, and nothing and no one around to see it.

** PALPATINE **

Ben has been living back home for nearly a year when his mother informs him that Palpatine finally kicked the bucket. 

“Sheev died,” is how she opens the phone call. Her voice is all crackle and static, raspy and low. “You’re coming with me to his funeral so I can watch them put the bastard in the ground.”

So Ben goes with her—primarily to carry her purse and give her an arm to lean on when she goes up to the casket to hiss, “I’ll see you in hell, you son of a bitch.” Ben isn’t entirely sure about all the circumstances surrounding that particular family feud, but he figures that whatever Palpatine did was plenty to warrant Leia’s utter disdain.

“Okay,” she tells him, straightening back up from her hunched position over the closed casket. “Take me back to my seat, Benji.”

He nods, dutiful. A son again.

He turns around to lead her back, palm carefully steadying her elbow.

And locks eyes with the last person he expected to see.

She looks just the same as the last time. Almost, he realizes, his eyes dropping down her body. Her hair is shorter, chopped up to her shoulders, left halfway down. But her eyes, lips, the freckles scattered over her cheeks like stars—all remain unchanged. Just as beautiful and heartrending as ever.

Like before, Ben finds himself considering the fickle nature of his memory. How could he have forgotten, after all, how every single feature of her face, how every sloping curve of her body makes him want to never look at anything else? How could he have ever convinced himself he didn’t want— _need_ to see her again?

It was absurd of him to pretend otherwise. He knows that now.

Rey is sitting in the back row of chairs, her eyes meeting his steadily, unsurprised; she must have seen him before he saw her.

His lips part, lungs pulling in a rush of air.

He hears himself speak, bending to murmur in Leia’s ear, “I need to take care of something.”

His mother follows his line of sight before he can think to tear it away from Rey. He sees her expression flicker in recognition, putting the pieces together before he has a chance to make excuses. She huffs out a small snort of derision, shaking her head.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” she murmurs, injecting every word with the scandalized tone he’d expect from other, regular mothers, that she has always done a piss-poor job of replicating. “At a funeral, Ben? Have you no shame?”

Apparently, he doesn’t.

Ben leaves his mother sitting next to Aunt Amilyn and decides the eulogy is a skippable enough event. Maybe the entire service, actually. He meets her gaze as he walks back from the front, and then he keeps going, past her, through the doors at the back of the funeral home.

When he’s outside, on the sidewalk in front of Exegol Funerary Services, he hears the doors open and close again behind him. 

Ben turns around, unable to keep the baffling, inappropriate smile off his face.

“Rey,” he says, halfway breathless. Maybe halfway in love, if this is what it feels like. And how ridiculous of him.

Rey tucks her hands into her elbows and glares. “Ben,” she replies grudgingly.

Her cheeks are flushed already, bright red in the cold, and her arms are wrapped around her front, huddling her body into itself. She’s not used to the weather, he can tell, and in that moment all Ben wants is to get her out of it. Pull her against his chest and keep her there, until her body is shaking for an entirely different reason.

He jerks his head in the direction of the road, where the car he drove the seven hour journey home almost a year ago is parked.

“Wanna get out of here?” he asks, in the cadence of a come-on.

The corners of her mouth quirk in an almost-a-smile. In his chest, his heart flutters wildly, like a moth.

It’s strange, having her in the passenger seat. Rey rubs her fingers together, lifting her bare hands to hold in front of the warm air blowing through the vents. She didn’t wear mittens, and her skin is an angry scarlet in protest of the freezing temperature. Ben watches the gentle flickering of her slender fingers, his tongue heavy in his mouth.

Ben turned on the car a few minutes ago, but they haven’t moved. The doors are unlocked, too; she could leave at any moment.

But she doesn’t.

“He was an asshole.” Rey scowls, huffing a hot breath into her palm, still trying to warm herself back up. “Total piece of shit. And I had to care for him for six fucking _months_. He just _refused_ to die.”

Reluctantly, Ben tears his gaze away. Looks instead at the windshield fogging up, the snow starting to drift again. “He sounds like an asshole.”

“You know he asked me to give him a handjob?” Her body is facing his now, her nose scrunched in anger, wrinkling up. It’s cute, he can’t help but think. Even if it’s not the right time to think about that. “The second week,” she goes on, still worked up. “Just—flat out. And he was always commenting on the size of my tits. Like they were too small. You don’t think my tits are too small, right?”

Ben chokes on nothing while Rey’s lips quirk in amusement. “Yeah,” he wheezes, “yeah, no, of course not.”

“And he was always trying to short me on my hours. Wrinkled fuck.” Rey frowns, staring at the floor of the car, stamping her faux-leather boots to clear them of lingering snow. Ben wonders how her toes don’t freeze. He thinks idly about getting her some Sorels instead. She should be more bundled up for a Midwestern winter. “I’m glad he’s not my problem anymore.”

She’s quiet for a moment, a sad little furrow etched between her eyebrows. Ben clears his throat, lips churning before he offers, “I’m sure my mother feels the same way.”

From the corner of his eye, Ben sees her sneak a glance in his direction. The shape of her jaw is softer, rounder than before, he realizes. She doesn’t look so hungry anymore, without that hollow look in her cheeks.

It makes him strangely happy. He’s not quite sure what to do with that.

Rey is still talking, filling the silence with her soft, serious voice. “I don’t think this about most of my clients. I want you to know that. People act all kinds of ways when they’re facing their own mortality, but that man was just— _egregious_. Most of the people I’ve worked with are actually really great, honestly. Like your—”

She stops in the middle of her thought, biting her bottom lip, worrying soft pink flesh with her teeth. He recognizes, a beat too late, why she did.

“It’s alright.” His voice is quiet, hard to hear under the sound of the hot air still blowing, filling up the car. He probably doesn’t need his gloves anymore. He takes them off, peeling leather off his knuckles, flexing his fingers open and closed. “You can say it.”

Rey looks at him. Her eyes are dark, big black pupils overwhelming the green. Ben wants to hold her face in his hand, but he doesn’t reach out. Not yet.

“Like your dad,” she says, and he sighs, shoulders sloping down.

“Yeah.”

Her expression is open and nearly sweet, the line of her mouth soft and lovely. He wants to sink his teeth into her lips, lick over the wound after. Like an animal. “I’m sorry for bringing it up,” she murmurs.

“Don’t be.” He winces, jaw ticking. He hasn’t seen her in a year. They’ve only met three times, and it shouldn’t—

He shouldn’t care so much.

But he does.

He’ll let himself admit to that, now.

“I have—” he starts, stammering over his words like a child. Takes a breath, teeth clicking. “I have more to be sorry for.”

There’s a moment. Quiet. Ben lets his eyes dart up, meeting hers, and she doesn’t pull herself away.

He thinks he might recognize the look on her face, the way he’d know himself in a mirror.

Committing something to memory. Holding onto it, just for herself.

He inhales, quick and sharp, and the moment passes by like a train roaring past, speeding away from him. 

Rey squints at the backseat of his car, making a show of turning her head this way and that, playing up the role of inspector. “This is a nice rental,” she says, her pitch just a little too high, a little too uncomfortable. 

“Oh, it’s not. A rental.” He clears his throat again, peering around his own vehicle the way she is, like it’s something that doesn’t even belong to him. With a critical eye brought about only in the presence of company, he notices more: the crumpled up receipts in the cupholders, the layer of dust on the dash. He wonders if Rey notices it, too. If she’s judging him silently for it. “It’s mine.”

Her voice, when she speaks again, has an odd quality to it. A thread of something like... _hope_. He thinks. “Do you live in town?”

Ben nods. “Moved back. A year ago, actually.”

He doesn’t think he’s imagining it this time, how her face seems to brighten at that, her eyebrows lifting, her lips twitching.

“Oh?”

“I wanted to call but I—didn’t have your number.” Ben squeezes his eyes shut, pinching the bridge of his nose, rubbing the skin there with his thumb. “Sorry, that sounds like complete bullshit when I say it out loud—”

“No, it’s fine—”

“The truth is I—” He hesitates, eyes darting to her, away again. He says, _admits_ , voice low and rough, “I didn’t think you’d want to hear from me.”

Rey shrugs. “I didn’t,” she replies plainly.

This time when he looks back at her he manages to keep his eyes fixed on hers.

He asks, “Do you now?”

She might lean closer, her knees tucking under her body in the seat. In her lap, her hands fidget, pick at her nails. “Does it seem like I do?”

He eyes her, a little warily. “Hard to tell.”

She bites her lip again, and Ben is struck, dumb and dazed, with the image of his hand reaching to her, cupping her cheek in his wide palm, burying his fingers in her hair, tugging her forward and sealing the distance between them—

“Do you live close by?” she asks, interrupting the fantasy.

Ben straightens up. “Not far,” he hedges. 

“An apartment?” she asks, and his head jerks, an uncoordinated yes.

“In midtown,” he adds, unnecessarily, foolishly, and he has half a second of panicked regret. That’s more than twenty minutes away; he doesn’t know if he could bear it, hearing her switch her mind off the track he thinks—he hopes, _desperately_ —it might be on.

But before he can trip too far down the rabbit hole, she stops him. Cocks her head, her mouth curling up at the edges.

She says, “Want to take me there?”

Rey is the only person he’s let into his apartment since he moved in. She’s the only person he’s let into his bedroom, in his bed. 

Because Ben is kissing her.

She’s stretched out underneath him, both of them still fully clothed, lying on top of his comforter. Rey keeps mewling into his mouth, letting out tiny noises of pleasure, arching her back so that their chests press together. She feels so small in his hands, even though he knows she isn’t, like something he wants to pick up and carry around forever. Keeping her close.

Her lips are soft, a little chapped under the cherry-flavored balm that sticks, tacky, to her skin. Ben doesn’t think he’s ever tasted anything so perfect.

Her legs open as he nudges closer, thighs spreading to cradle his hips, and Ben lets out a sigh as they align there. Right there.

He feels dizzy. With all of this, all that he doesn’t deserve.

Rey lies there beneath him, her mouth moving in his, whining a little as he shifts closer, pushing into her. She’s warm between her thighs, burning up like coal, nylon-clad legs slipping up and hooking around his belt as she murmurs his name against his tongue. Ben feels younger than he is, a teenager again, hard under his slacks and rutting himself against the heat of her like it’s enough, like he could do it forever and be satisfied. And he could, he thinks. He could rest his body over hers and kiss the balm off her lips, lick every part of the inside of her mouth, nip her chin, cheek, neck, and never do anything else, and he’d be grateful for just that much.

It’s been a long few years.

Rey’s fingers skip up the side of his face, tangling in his hair as she tilts her head away. “You’re very nice-looking,” she murmurs, low and solemn.

Ben feels a smile crack across his face like an eggshell. “Yeah?”

She nods, tracing a line down his cheek. “Mhm.” She hums. “Very handsome.”

“So are you,” he says, too quick, and then pauses, cringing at the mistake. “Beautiful, I mean. Not handsome. You’re very…” He trails off, dropping his head against her collarbone as she shivers with constrained laughter. “Beautiful, is what I mean. Don’t giggle at me.”

“I’m not,” she lies.

Something inside him melts, like ice held in a closed fist. Ben leans away from her, drinking in every minuscule movement of her features, trying to keep every single part. And maybe he’ll have more time to do that, now.

Maybe he’ll have all the time in the world.

They undress between kisses. It’s slow-going, every article of clothing revealing more and more skin for him to map out with his tongue. He’s never seen so much on her before. She has freckles on her shoulders, he discovers, ones he connects between his fingers like the dots of a constellation. A birthmark on her stomach the size and shape and color of a raspberry. Pale stretch marks curving around her hips, the swell of her ass. Ben wraps an arm around her waist and raises her up, listening to the whimper caught in her throat as he mouths the small of her back. He peels her underwear off, rolling it down her legs, and bends down, laying a kiss on her upper thigh.

“Lay down.” Her voice is quiet, gentle, at odds with the desperate way she moves against him, body searching out his fingers, his mouth. She shifts back, and he can feel it in his palm, how wet she is, soaking. He can _hear_ it.

He groans, loud, as she shivers underneath his touch, “ _Fuck_ ,” dragging out the final sound until it mangles in his throat. 

“Lay down,” she tells him again, gasping, and this time he does, on his back, wearing only his boxer-briefs and socks.

He waits, shivering, and Rey sidles down his body, ass in the air, ankles up by his shoulders, on all fours.

She lowers her head, rubbing her cheek over his clothed erection, lips tipped up in what looks like a private smile as he chokes on nothing.

And it’s not fair at all.

Ben hooks his hands in the hollows of her hips, tugging hard, pulling her back until his mouth lines up, _yes, perfect,_ and—

“ _Ben_ ,” she moans, sounding almost surprised—

Her voice hitches into a squeal as he licks a line up the seam of her, sloppy and wet. Rey squirms under his attention, tiny little kicks of her feet making burrows in the comforter, every sound that he forces from her a whine.

He _devours_ her.

It takes some maneuvering, some subtle encouragement of his hands, to get her to sit down on his mouth.

And, _oh_ , how he missed this. For the past year; for his entire life, maybe.

Rey falls forward as he sucks her clit into his mouth, bucking her hips, biting off strangled grunts and breathless sighs. He feels her fumbling with the elastic band of his underwear, her little hand circling his shaft and—

“Shit. _Shit_.” Her hot little mouth opening around the head of his cock. Ben throws his head back, gasping as she pushes hers further down, the curtain of her hair tickling his stomach. “Oh my god, Rey, oh my god—”

She moans, and his dick throbs, twitching. She moans again, seemingly on purpose this time, and Ben bites down on a shout. Instead, he buries his face back in her folds, muffling the sound of a groan in her wet pussy. 

Rey takes another few inches in her mouth.

His fingers tighten around her thigh, nails biting into her skin, and Ben uses his other hand to caress her ass, to circle the tip of his thumb around her dripping hole.

“So pretty,” he marvels, and Rey keens at the praise, her mouth slack around his cock. He pushes his thumb inside, watching cross-eyed as her body accepts him, tight and hot and gorgeous. He pulls it back out, replaces it with one finger, and another. Curves them inside, just how she likes. “Pretty and perfect, _fuck_.”

“ _Ben_.” Her whole body is trembling, and he can tell she’s right there, right up against the edge, all she needs is one push and he can give it to her, all she needs is—

“Ben, _please—_ ”

He feels her cunt clench around his fingers, tastes her on his tongue, body gone liquid and messy, and the moment he sucks she _shatters_.

Quakes above him, her mouth leaving open kisses on the side of his cock as she wails into the air.

Then, before Ben can tug her off of him, lay her out on the mattress and fuck her into oblivion, Rey turns her head and catches his cock back inside her mouth. Nudges forward until the head bumps against the back of her throat.

He comes with a wild gasp, spilling himself on her tongue, her name slipping easily from parted lips.

He fucks her later. 

Rey falls asleep in his bed, early, sometime around six in the evening. Ben doesn’t last much longer, barely noticing it when his eyes flutter closed.

(Amilyn has to drive his mother home. Leia informs him of this via a passive-aggressive text— _Well I guess I just have to make my OWN way home, don’t I? Hope you’re having FUN, my darling little terror of a son. XOXO MOM_ —that he promptly ignores.)

When they wake again, around two in the morning, he enters her, slow, his lips catching hers on every long movement inside. Grinding against her pelvis, thrusting inside her wet heat hard enough that the corners of his sheets peel and flip up over their feet.

He makes her come until she’s crying, her fingers hiding her face and whole body heaving. Ben pulls her hand away, his mouth crooked into an unfamiliar smile. Presses his mouth to the heel of her palm, murmuring soft little nothings he’s not even sure she’ll hear.

She drifts off again while he’s still inside her, her body gone all pliant and loose-limbed, her mouth open on his collarbone. Making a soft little sound when he pulls out, nuzzling closer to him even in sleep.

** TICO/STORM **

Someone is going to miss them. Or her, at least, as a key member of the wedding party. Ben got to skip out on that particular obligation thanks to his not-quite-close relationship with Rose and Finn, but, Rey assures him, he’ll most certainly be dragged into all future commitments as long as he’s her boyfriend.

Or fiancé. Or husband. Or whatever.

Fiancé, actually. As of last week. Not that they’re telling anyone that, her ring finger left bare. Rey didn’t want to pull attention away from the happy couple.

Ben wants to shout it from the rooftops. Inform random strangers passing by. 

For now, he’ll happily settle for this, though: Rey’s arms around his shoulders, her legs around his hips, her chin tipped up as he nips at her throat. Fucking her into the coat closet door.

Anyone walking past must be able to tell what’s happening on the other side. The door pounds with every single thrust, and he’s not exactly trying to be subtle about how he fucks the daylights out of her.

She just needs to be quiet, he told her when she dragged him in there with her ten minutes earlier. Because if she can’t be quiet, then—

“Then what?” Rey had crossed her arms, arching an eyebrow skeptically. Fucking mouthy.

He loved it. Always does.

He tutted, edging nearer to the door, watching with a shiver of satisfaction as her eyes darkened at his approach. “Oh, I’m sure I’ll figure something out,” was his reply.

No fucking shame is right.

Now, he pins her to the door with his hips, one hand holding her up by her ass, the other roaming freely over her tits through the abomination that is her Maid of Honor dress.

His mouth brushes hers every time they move together, the barest hint of a kiss. 

On a particularly brutal thrust, she cries out, her palm clapping over her mouth a moment too late.

Ben smirks into her lips, letting it stretch into a grin when she pouts.

“Oh, _honey_.” He speaks low, quiet and intent, his lips pressed against her neck. Teeth scrape her ear, pulling a pleased shiver out of her. “What did I tell you about being quiet?”

“I don’t know.” Her voice is surprisingly level for someone with a cock inside her; he’ll have to fix that. Rey smiles, dazzling and haughty. Little brat. “You never finished your thought.”

Ben’s hand slides up her torso, wraps lightly around her neck.

“If you can’t be quiet—” he pounds into her on every single word, voice dark and velvet-soft, promising of all her favorite kinds of depravity, “then I’ll have to punish you when we get home.”

Rey gets out between throaty little whines, whispering in his ear, “Kind of—loses—its immediacy—when I have—to wait—don’t you think?”

Ben growls, biting down on her earlobe when she laughs, and sets about fucking her harder.

Her heels skid down the back of his legs, her thighs tightening around him as she winds up further and further, inching closer and closer to her release. He can feel it in the way she quivers around him, hear it in the desperate pants that keep escaping no matter how hard she tries to keep herself from making any more noise.

She’s going to come. He’s going to make her come right fucking _now_.

“Ben—” She inhales, a punch of air, untamed, and all his. All for him. _This_ , he thinks, is what he wanted when she walked with him into this bathroom—coat closet, he realizes, but only distantly, they’re not in a bathroom, it’s a—

“Ben, please—”

—it’s all he wanted when he first saw her, black dress and too-thin stockings, red mouth parting for him, letting him work his way inside her warmth and stay there for a little while—

“Ben, I think I’m—”

He grunts, adjusting his grip on her body, hitching her higher up the door. He resets his rhythm as brutal, ripping noises of pleasure from her throat. She lets him inside, open and loving. 

This is all he wanted, he thinks, lips smearing wet over her neck, forehead knocking into the wood behind her head. Just this.

Just Rey.

“Baby, I’m gonna—”

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on twitter @janedazey if ur about that


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